This invention relates to an ornamental band to be secured to a selected area of the surface of a vehicle or furniture to enhance the ornamental effect of the vehicle or furniture and maintain the ornamental effect for a long time and has its object to provide an ornamental band having finely finished longitudinal opposite ends for enhancing the ornamental appearance of vehicles or the like.
There have been proposed and practically employed a variety of ornamental bands for vehicles to enhance the ornamental appearance of the vehicles. The prior art ornamental bands have been generally produced by extrusion-molding synthetic resin or resins having a brilliant tape core incorporated therein. However, since the thus extruded prior art ornamental band has an indefinite length, the band has to be cut at the opposite ends to a desired length leaving the ends as cut and thus, the end cuts present quite an unsightly appearance.
Therefore, in use, the opposite end cuts of the molded ornamental band are usually covered by end covers having substantially the same cross-sectional shape and size as those of the ornamental band itself by gluing or fitting the covers to or on the end cuts to give a pleasing appearance to the band ends. In this case, since the end cover to be glued to or fitted on the associated longitudinal end of the band is produced by molding synthetic resin, the end cover fulfills its intended function as the cover provided that the end cover has substantially the same cross-sectional shape and size as the ornamental band itself, but the end cover has the drawbacks that the end cover protrudes outwardly from the associated longitudinal end of the ornamental band resulting in aesthetically poor appearance and that the end cover tends to easily get damaged and/or separated from the end of the band at the connection portion of the end cover to the band end.
Further, there has been also known an extrusion molded ornamental band having end covers integrally molded with the longitudinal opposite ends of the band. The ornamental band having the end covers molded integrally with the longitudinal opposite ends thereof can solve the problems inherent to the prior art ornamental band having the separately molded and attached end covers, that is, the troublesome and time-consuming operation of making the separate end covers and the unsightly finish. Howeer, the mold unit of the extrusion-molding machine for ornamental bands having end covers molded integrally with the longitudinal opposite ends thereof is very expensive and the ornamental band having the end covers integrally formed with the longitudinal opposite ends is still not perfectly satisfactory because the band does not enhance the ornamental effect to be imparted to the vehicle to which the ornamental band is applied.